Yale Law School Home Page
Advanced Legal Research Robert Harrison, Blair Kauffman, Lisa Spar
Spring 1998

ELECTRONIC SOURCES OF FOREIGN AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

 

Treaty research 2 elements

1 - finding the full text

2 - determining the status

 

I. LEXIS® -

INTLAW library

    1. Select area of law by topic
    2. Select INTLAW
    3. Select Treaties and International Agreements
    4. Select a file

Full text of treaties ILMTY, ASIL, TREATIES

Status of treaties - USTRTY contains the full coverage (from 1783) of TIF - not full text of treaties, just which bilateral and multilateral treaties are currently in force. Reservations are not listed in TIF

 

Sample search in INTLAW;ILMTY or INTLAW;ASIL

If you have a cite, use lexsee

If you know the subject matter use

section (treaty) and appropriate boolean search string

OR

Choose correct library and file and run search:

- Section (Treaties) and Title (law of the sea) or

- Section (Treaties) and treatment w/s women w/3 children

II. WESTLAW® -

    1. Choose a database
    2. Choose Topical Materials by Area of Practice, including International
    3. Choose International & Foreign Law
    4. Choose International Agreements & Treaties

Full text of selected treaties – ILM (and ILM-INDX) and ASIL databases, USTREATIES database

Sample Searches

Click find and type 19ilm1

OR

Use fields: Source (So) for parties, author (Au) for signatories, Index (In) for subject matter, Title (Ti)

Examples:

So(Canada) and In(Pollution)

Au("United States") and Ti(environment)

So("United States") and Ti(environment)

 

III. INTERNET SOURCES - Bookmark these sites!